


Every Part a Flame

by stars_inthe_sky



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Terminator Fusion, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Buckynat mini bang, Captain America: The First Avenger, F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Italy, POV Bucky Barnes, Protective Natasha Romanov, Time Travel, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 17:36:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6480103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the 21st century, Hydra decides to reshape the future by changing the past. </p><p>In the fall of 1943, Sergeant Barnes finds himself the unwitting target of an unstoppable assassin…and at the mercy of a fighter from the future who may be his only chance at survival.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Part a Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Our story picks up in the midst of [this deleted scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Sg_vd6a10) from _Captain America: the First Avenger_. You can see what contemporary Hydra uniforms looked like [here](http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelmovies/images/c/c5/HYDRAsoldiers-CATFA.png/revision/latest?cb=20131225044632).
> 
> Thank you to [Vylla](http://www.vylla-art.com/post/142429523295/my-contribution-for-the-buckynat-big-bang-this-is) for the positively breathtaking artwork!

 

* * *

Even four months into his deployment, nothing could have prepared Bucky Barnes for Nazis armed with enormous ray guns that can eliminate a man where he stands, leaving nothing but fading blue smoke behind.

Enemy fire had started raining down on the 107th in Azzano, and the soldiers had launched into a textbook response.  Everything had gone to hell fast, though, starting with the sheer volume of black-uniformed Germans streaming onto the battlefield and ending with the Americans forced to scatter in every direction.

Bucky normally holds himself together during a firefight with the best of them, but when he sees that the vaporizing guns are backed by a massive tank aimed directly at the foxhole he’s huddled in with Dugan and Jones, he gives up any hope of maintaining formation. Bucky bolts in the first direction he determines to be _away_ , same as the rest of the guys. They’re going to be dead or captured in minutes; their ammunition is all but spent.  The best any of them can do is to try to be the exception, to get word back to the Allies about the carnage and these impossible weapons that are like something out of a radio drama.

He’s almost made it to a nearby thicket at the edge of the battlefield when a booted foot juts out of nowhere to trip him. Running at full tilt, Bucky goes flying head over feet, and his helmet is the only thing that keeps him from getting brained when his head hits a rock. He struggles back to his feet, but the attacker advances on him.

He—if it is a he—has a creepy bucket of a helmet, splattered with white paint on the front in the shape of a skull, including the eye sockets. An “X” of more white paint is smeared across the heavy front of his uniform, which is otherwise black and heavy like the others. There are knives, bullets, and guns of every size strapped to him, and the red octopus badge on his arm catches Bucky’s eye—the other attackers had had the same insignia, too. It occurs to him that maybe his squad’s no longer fighting Nazis.

Raising a machine gun one-handed, the larger man catches Bucky in his rifle’s sights, aims, and then goes flying sideways.

Bucky, convinced he’s about to die, blinks rapidly at the battered Army Jeep that had hit his impossibly large assailant and manages to get back on his feet. He glances at where the other man—thing—had been thrown, but before he can figure out what the hell is going on, the Jeep’s driver screams, “Bucky Barnes!”

He turns back to the Jeep so fast it makes his head spin. That voice doesn’t belong to one of his fellow soldiers—it sounds female. The redhead behind the wheel isn’t anyone he’s met before; even in the midst of battle, he’s sure he couldn’t possibly have forgotten that face, with its precise, delicate features and sharp eyes that lock onto him even in the dim light.

“Come with me if you want to live,” she shouts, apparently nonplussed by the slaughter around them or the man she’s just knocked over. Her tone leaves no room for argument. “Now, soldier!”

The huge, silent man she had hit starts to stir, and Bucky clears his head enough to obey the unknown person who’s probably just saved his life. He’s barely climbed into the passenger seat before she slams on the gas. The car screeches backward across the rapidly emptying battlefield, then surges forward at a different angle.

“I’m Natasha,” she yells over the din. “Steve sent me; let’s get you out of here!”

Bucky feels his stomach lurch. Steve’s supposed to be four thousand miles away and safe at home. And anyway, he couldn’t possibly know this woman, who’s driving the Jeep like she was born behind the wheel. They’re city boys, whereas she doesn’t even cast a glance at the random not-a-Nazi she kicks away from her side of the car with her left foot mid-turn. And even if he somehow did—

“How the fuck could he possibly know I was here?”

As they put more space between the Jeep and the battlefield, Bucky has trouble seeing much of anything, but the woman seems to have a plan for where to drive—until the attacker she’d hit literally grabs the rear bumper of the Jeep. She speeds up and cuts right, hard, which gets them out of his immediate reaches, but not by much.

“Backseat now, answers later, Barnes,” she snaps. “Put your sharpshooting to good use and blow him away, if you can.”

Orders and shooting, at least, he can wrap his mind around right now, and not dying does seem more important than Steve Rogers’s whereabouts. “You got the best sniper in the U.S. Army, lady!” he retorts.

Ignoring her skeptical look, Bucky crawls into the backseat and grabs an automatic rifle off of a pile rattling around on the floor. It’s loaded, thankfully, and he starts firing. He hits their pursuer twice in quick succession, even with the unsteadiness of Natasha’s wild driving and the other man’s dodging mid-stride. But Bucky’s shots glance off his chest, not even slowing him down.

Every inch of skin looks covered by his uniform, but Bucky aims for his limbs, which look less thickly clothed. Ducking to avoid his target’s return fire, Bucky manages to hit his thigh and what might be the man’s elbow. He hardly seems to notice he’s been shot until the force of the bullet to his arm throws off his gun hand, and the shock of that breaks his focus on shooting Bucky just long enough for him to stumble and fall face-first onto the dirt road.

Natasha somehow speeds the car up even more, shooting arrow-straight along the road into the night. She flickers the Jeep’s headlights a couple of times, and when they’re decisively out of sight of both the battlefield and the assailant, she leaves them on.

“Stand down, Barnes,” she mutters. “We’ll find somewhere to regroup, but first we gotta put a little more distance between us and him.”

Still holding the M1918 Browning he’d grabbed, Bucky haltingly clambers back to the passenger seat. “Not arguing with that part, but who—or, or what the hell is that guy? How is he moving so fast with so much weight? Why is he after us?”

“Not ‘us,’ just you,” Natasha says. “He’s called Crossbones, and he’s only mostly unkillable. Probably.”

“What?”

She chuckles and shakes her head, squinting into the darkness ahead of them but smiling a little wryly. “Buckle up; this is gonna be a lot.”

“Buckle up?”

“Ah, no seat belts. This is 1943, right?”

“Um, yeah, October…something. Okay, seriously, what the hell is going on? Who are you? How did you know who I am?”

“I’m a friend, which you definitely need right now,” she replies, eyes still focused ahead. “Crossbones was sent by Hydra to kill you; I was sent to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re lucky those Tesseract guns take multiple guys to operate in the field, otherwise he could’ve gotten his hands on one, and we’d probably _both_ be toast right now. Also lucky he’s crazy, even by Hydra standards, so it doesn’t look like he’s getting any help.”

Natasha doesn’t actually turn her head, but it probably isn’t hard for her to guess how confused Bucky is. She continues, “Right, so, background: Hydra’s the Nazis’ experimental science division. They’ve got an alien weapon called the Tesseract—long story, but that’s what they’re using to make those vaporizers. The Allies have the Strategic Science Reserve, but they’re basically just trying to keep up with Hydra in terms of most tech…except they cracked the secret to making super-soldiers a few months ago. And they used your friend Steve to prove it. Next time you see him, he’ll be six feet tall, 220 pounds, no asthma, the works. They call him Captain America. Kind of cheesy, but it suits him.”

“Wha—how?” Bucky’s fingers tense around the Browning. It’s out of bullets, but the familiar shape in his hands is comforting as he speeds through the woods away from familiar turf, with a stunt driver of a woman who’s reciting information like she’s memorized it from a text.

“Hell if I know,” she shrugs. “The scientist behind it was assassinated, and no one’s able to recreate the formula for at least seventy years.”

“Seventy _what_?”

“Right. So, after the war, Steve’s plane crashes in the Arctic, he freezes alive, survives thanks to that super-soldier serum, and joins the S.S.R.’s peacetime successor, S.H.I.E.L.D. That’s how I met him—we worked together, especially after it turned out Hydra hadn’t _really_ died with the Third Reich a couple of years from now. But Steve’s a pretty big burr in Hydra’s side, naturally, and apparently they figured _you_ , Bucky Barnes, were the difference between him catching a bullet in the neck somewhere in France next year and surviving to continue trying to dismantle _them_. To prevent that, Hydra sent their best after you—and then S.H.I.E.L.D. did, too.” She gestures to herself.

“But I haven’t…even if what you’re saying is true, that would make you—”

“A secret agent from the future? Exactly.” A Cheshire sort of grin spreads across her face. “Hydra cracked the secret to time travel sometime in the 2010s. Me and Steve and our team got there just in time to see Crossbones make the jump. So, I followed. But all he or I knew was that you’d be at the Battle of Azzano...somewhere. Otherwise, I’d’ve obviously tried to find you in a slightly less dramatic fashion. Slightly.” She gives him a lopsided grin.

If nothing else, she was right at the beginning; this _is_ a lot to process, especially when his clothes smell like gunpowder and mud and he’s just seen a dozen people vanish into nothing. He stares intently at his hands, still white-knuckled around the Browning, for a minute or two, trying to sort through everything she’s said.

Finally, he manages, “Crossbones? Is that…some kind of title?”

“It’s a codename,” Natasha explains, shifting her gaze to include him as well as the road. “He used to be an operative called Brock Rumlow. Got most of his skin and nerve endings burned off, so he doesn’t feel much pain. That’s why they sent him after you—they needed someone unstoppable.”

“Why me, though? Even if Steve’s really—everything you’re claiming…it’s not like I’m nearby to, what, defend him…”

“No, not yet.” Her eyes flicker back to the road, where a distant line of pavement is just barely visible in the headlights. “But you will be. He’s too well-defended in the next few years for Hydra to get at him, and then he’s frozen—no telling where, specifically, since that stayed hella classified, and glaciers tend to move around. Anything before now and they can’t risk trying to find one scrawny kid in the middle of New York City. You’re the difference that keeps him alive, Barnes, and I came across time for you. Accept it and let me help you at least survive this part. Okay?”

He can see the ghost of a smile spread across Natasha’s features in the dim light. The small change of expression softens her hard features, and, in the back of his mind, Bucky thinks he’d like to see what she looks like with an actual smile on her face.

“You’re serious,” he realizes. For some reason, this makes a little of the tension seep out of his body, and his hands unclench enough to put the unloaded Browning back in the pile.

“You’re cute,” Natasha replies. “Men exploding into nothing in front of you, nearly unkillable super-soldier from the future on your trail, beautiful dame from the early twenty-first century here to save your skin—you really think time-travel is that impossible? That science hasn’t found a way to give Steve Rogers a body to match his heart? Just you wait on that one. It’s gonna blow your mind. I kinda wish I could see it, actually.”

She pulls the car to an abrupt stop as they cross onto an actual paved road, and they both squint to look at a sign marking the intersection.

“Caorle—there’s supposed to be an Allied outpost near there,” Bucky suggests. “Nothing major, but at least a safehouse. One of those places with a couple of sympathetic older officers who aren’t good for much more than helping you lay low for a bit.”

Natasha’s mouth thins into a skeptical frown. “Urban areas will be good for blending in, but I’m not sure a little port town like that is our best bet.”

“Friendly faces, though,” he points out. “You make it sound like he’s gonna keep coming for me even after we lost him back there, right? So, we should go to our own people. Who knows, maybe they’ll have some weapons that actually work on him, or at least somewhere to sleep. And we have to tell somebody about those, uh, Tesseract guns back there, they—”

“You’re not the only one to make it out of there, I promise,” she says. “And you’ll have your chance to fight back against Hydra. But right now, we have to outwit and outlast Brock Rumlow.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

She sighs, blowing a raspberry that makes her hair flutter around her face. “Fine. Let’s see if we can make it to Caorle.”

***

It doesn’t take long to reach the coastline, not with the way Natasha drives, and luckily the outpost Bucky remembered is where it’s supposed to be. A stern older Englishwoman, clearly unhappy at being roused in the middle of the night to deal with two stray Americans, demands his name, rank, serial number, and an explanation before she opens the door more than a crack.

Despite Natasha’s glare, Bucky gives her his information, simplifying their story to having fled a massacre at Azzano and introducing Natasha as a nurse who had escaped with him. Their host introduces herself as Mrs. O’Brien, a British expat. Her husband, a thin-faced gentleman with a bushy mustache, was apparently a colonel who had nominally retired to the coast shortly before Poland fell. He seems a bit more excited about their presence and welcomes them into a parlor. His wife sighs mightily and leaves to fetch tea.

“Well, don’t dawdle, man; do tell what’s happened at Azzano! The missus’ll report you up the chain, of course, but let’s have the whole story.”

Bucky opens his mouth to repeat what he’d told Mrs. O’Brien, but Natasha cuts him off. “There’s a secret Nazi plot against this man, Colonel. I’m not a nurse; I’m on special assignment from the Allied Forces’ Strategic Scientific Reserve to keep him safe, and we’re going to need you not to breathe a word of our presence to _anyone_ , including your superiors. We also need a change of clothing, any explosives you have on base here, and a map of the area. Is that clear?”

O’Brien stares at her blankly for several seconds, then bursts out laughing. “You cannot possibly be serious, Miss…?”

“My name is _not_ important,” she snaps. “Are you willing to help us, or do I need to make you?”

He raises a skeptical eyebrow at her, clearly amused. Bucky jumps in, “Look, she’s—she’s telling the truth, okay? I only made it out of Azzano because of her. This Kraut almost killed me, and he’s still chasing…us…”

Bucky trails off as O’Brien shakes his head, chuckling. “I’m sure he’s very dangerous, Sergeant Barnes, but you can’t expect me to simply hand your girl Friday here sensitive information, let alone explosives. Although she certainly could use that change of clothing.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, and Bucky realizes he’s getting his first proper look at her. However angry, she’s even prettier standing in the lamplight, with sharp green eyes and bright, gently curling red hair cropped short by her ears. Though more petite than he had realized sitting in the Jeep, she cuts a striking, athletic figure, even in ill-fitting trousers and a buttoned jacket meant for a man.

“Why _are_ you dressed like that, anyway?” The words fall out of his mouth before he realizes he’s spoken aloud.

She glares at him, then glances back at O’Brien, and shakes her head at both of them. “Because I’m a time-traveling super-spy from the future sent here to save your damn life, and the equipment only sends living organic material through for some reason. I stole the first uniform I could get my hands on.” Bucky feels his jaw go slack, and she adds, “For what it’s worth, that’s presumably why Crossbones is working off of current technology, too. If he had any of the shit he carried in my time…we’d be long gone.”

He shuts up. Whoever she is, Natasha’s rescued him from almost certain death, with a precision that suggested not only sanity but some measure of experience with both driving and advanced weaponry. Time travel still seems like a leap, but so does a giant armored Nazi who can’t feel pain, and Bucky can’t think of a better reason he’d be of any strategic importance to anyone. Or why an admittedly stunning woman would show up at just the right moment so determined to help him.

Turning back to O’Brien, Natasha hisses, “I don’t care if you think I’m crazy, I don’t care who you think you need to tell, we are doing this my way, or—”

All three of them freeze when there’s a knock at the front door. Natasha purses her lips, jaw clenched, and even the Colonel looks concerned enough at getting a second visitor in so short a time that he remains silent.

“What?” Mrs. O’Brien groans through the closed front door.

“Either you open this door or I do, English,” a male voice growls roughly. “And you don’t want me to do that.”

Bucky starts—from the look on Natasha’s face, it’s got to be Crossbones outside, but his accent is distinctly American, maybe even New York, and not remotely German or even from one of the other Axis powers. She notices his surprise and shakes her head at him to keep quiet. They’d left her apparently pilfered arsenal in the Jeep, but he realizes she has a handgun strapped to one leg, and she’s sliding knives out of either shirtsleeve.

“Sod off,” Mrs. O’Brien snaps. “My husband’s got a gun, and he’s not the only one who knows how to use it!” She stomps away from the door back to the kitchen.

“Sure thing, English,” Rumlow retorts from the other side of the thick wood. “I’ll be back.”

After a few seconds of silence, the Colonel starts to rise from his chair, and Natasha hisses, “Don’t. Get out the back, right now. He’ll kill us all just to get to Barnes. Believe me or don’t, but don’t risk your life or your wife’s to prove me wrong.”

Before O’Brien can respond, Natasha grabs Bucky’s hand and yanks him into the next room, and then the next. They’re almost through the kitchen exit, past an exasperated Mrs. O’Brien, when the whole house is rocked by a small explosion.

“That’d be the front door,” Natasha groans. Bucky doesn’t contradict her; he can already hear Crossbones dashing through the house and the rapid patter of an automatic rifle.

They race around the side of the house as he crashes toward its rear. Natasha somersaults back into the driver’s seat of the car—saving them both from Bucky’s meager driving skills—and once again has the Jeep in gear before he’s all the way in it. By some miracle, they disappear back into the darkness, heading down the coast.

“How—how did he find us that fast? He didn’t even have a car…” Bucky murmurs, keeping an eye on the space behind them with a fresh M2 carbine in hand.

Natasha shrugs. “Ran, probably. I told you, he won’t stop. And if that woman radioed _anyone_ that we were there…”

“You think she did? And he heard?”

“I’d bet _your_ life that’s exactly what happened,” she nods. “That’s why we can’t trust _anyone_ until he’s taken care of.” Despite the moving, unlit car, she turns to face him. “Listen to me. You make contact with anyone, you tell _anybody_ else who you are, and I _guarantee_ you he’ll figure it out. You think he can’t listen into radio channels? Even telephones? I’m telling you, Rumlow is out there, and he _is_ going to keep coming for you. He can’t be reasoned with, can’t be bargained with. He doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and he absolutely will not stop, ever, until you’re dead.”

“Can…can you stop him?” Bucky’s voice sounds small in his own ears.

“On the run, with these weapons?” she sighs, looking worried for the first time. “I hope so. That’s the plan, anyway.”

***

The Jeep runs out of gas a dozen or so miles down the coastline, so they ditch it near Cortellazzo and double back on foot to Eraclea Mare. Over one shoulder, Bucky carries Natasha’s arsenal in a duffel bag that had been in the Jeep; he holds the M2 in the opposite hand. She has her knives at the ready in each palm and keeps touching her holstered handgun as if to check it’s still there.

Natasha breaks their determined silence to point out an inconspicuous dock toward the end of the beach, just as the sun hints at rising, and suggests that they can steal a motorboat a few piers over if needed—no matter how strong he is, Crossbones will have _some_ trouble swimming in all that armor. The gaps between pilings below the dock are mostly covered by plywood, offering them an inconspicuous hideout, so they pry one up enough to slip underneath.

Natasha takes an extra few minutes to conceal their presence, dusting away their bootprints and moving driftwood around. “Believe me yet, Sergeant?”

“Seems like I should, since you keep saving my life.”

“I told you,” she insists, returning to their makeshift shelter and settling down next to him to lean against a broad pylon. “You’re my mission. I’m here to make sure the future holds—and that means keeping you alive long enough to find Steve. Oh, that reminds me, by the way: I have a message for you. He made me memorize this, but I swear no one else could recite these words without sounding like an idiot, okay? Including me.”

Bucky blinks, and she takes that as a go-ahead, gripping one of his hands as she speaks. “‘Thank you, Buck, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or we will never see each other again.’”

“That…does actually sound like something he’d say,” Bucky admits. “So, fine, I believe you, now what?”

“Sleep,” she confirms. “There’s no use trying to fight off Rumlow if neither of us can keep our eyes open, and I think we’re as hidden as we can be here.”

Natasha shifts her weight to get more comfortable against the wood, and the ill-fitting jacket she’d taken from the Jeep falls aside to reveal a dark red stain on her left shoulder.

“Shit, he hit you,” Bucky hisses. They don’t have any medical supplies, but he begins ripping strips of fabric off of his shirt hem. “How long has that been bleeding? Why didn’t you say anything? I can manage a field dressing, at least.”

She glances at the blood. “Oh. Hadn’t noticed. Got enough scar tissue there from another wound that half the nerve endings are shot to hell. Guess I didn’t lose too much blood this time, at least.”

“Might as well clean it, though,” he insists.

“Sure, go for it,” she says, shrugging her uninjured shoulder and unbuttoning her shirt far enough to pull the neck aside for him to look at the wound. Luckily, it’s not much more than a scrape, and it’s already clotted into a partial scab that contrasts sharply with her pale skin.

Bucky crawls down to the water, careful to stay under the dock, and wets one of his makeshift bandages. Returning to Natasha, he dabs away most of the blood, trying not to stare at her slightly exposed cleavage. She hisses at the salt but doesn’t say anything.

“So,” he finally says, by way of distraction. “What’s your future like? Flying cars and invisible jets?”

She smiles. “Well, yeah, technically, but it’s not really that different than now, I think. Food’s better. Telephones are portable—you can watch movies on them now, too. Computers…no, I’m not going to try to explain computers. But I did get to ride on an invisible aircraft carrier a few times. Steve did, too, actually—but don’t spoil that for him, please. The look on his face…”

“I can only imagine.” Bucky ties off the bandage on her arm with a tidy bow, adding, “And you’re done.”

“Thanks,” she says, twisting to look at his handiwork and failing to contain a yawn. “Sleep now, though.”

He nods in agreement and settles in next to her, leaning against the wood plank. Without saying anything, she rests her head on his shoulder and curls toward him, close enough that Bucky can feel her body heat through their clothes. He holds very still for a few breaths, but she doesn’t seem to change her mind about her position, and they’re both asleep before long.

***

It’s late morning when he wakes up with a start, the humidity of the day already stale in their shelter. Natasha stirs next to him, her hair indented at a funny angle from where it had molded around his shoulder. He can’t help smiling at that, and she rolls her eyes and ties her hair back with the now-dry but bloodstained cloth from before.

“Sleep okay, Barnes?”

He shrugs. “I think I had a dream about ice. Or somewhere cold, anyway. And you might as well call me Bucky; everyone else does.”

Natasha twitches just slightly at his first comment, so subtly that he thinks he might have imagined it. She shakes her head. “I’m not calling you that; it’s a silly nickname for a grown man. Even if it is era-appropriate.”

“You’re serious?”

“Deadly,” she assures him, but she’s smiling now, too. He likes the way it reaches her eyes. “What’s it short for? Maybe I’ll call you that.”

“Buchanan,” he admits. “My middle name. Steve couldn’t get his mouth around it when we were kids. My first name’s just James, but no one’s ever…”

“Oh, that’s a nice one, though,” she interjects. “Shame you’re stuck with the silly option.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” he argues. “Anyway, at least I have a full name, _Natasha_.”

“So do I,” she retorts. “Natasha’s a diminutive, too. Natalia Alianovna Romanova.” She puts out her hand for him to shake, and he takes it, amused.

“Romanova? Sounds Russian.”

“It is. Most Americans go with Romanoff, easier to say.” She shrugs.

“Wait, you’re not American?” The Soviets are Allies, he knows, but he also knows nobody trusts them worth a damn anyway. “But your accent…”

“I learned English from native speakers,” Natasha says, suddenly careful again. She rises and brushes loose sand off of her clothing. “Anyway, the Soviet Union will collapse in, oh, about half a century anyway, so it won’t really matter.”

“If you say so… _Natalia_ ,” Bucky follows suit and decides to focus on the more pressing matters at hand. Regardless of nationality, he has reason enough to trust her at this point. “What now? Are we just going to keep running from Crossbones until…what, Steve lands in Europe, magically enormous?”

“No way,” she says. “This continent isn’t big enough to lose Rumlow for too long. We’ll find somewhere a little more sustainable to hole up for a few days, figure out a surefire way to trap and kill him.” She nods at the end of her sentence, like she came up with the plan in the middle of explaining it.

They both check their surroundings before making a move, but there’s no sign of anyone nearby, and they wander towards the small town. “We can probably find an inn or something. In the neighborhood, I mean,” Natasha suggests. “Sleep a little more, eat, bathe, figure out where to get some better munitions and maybe a change of clothes to blend in a little better—I’ve got some money in the duffel. Then we make a plan, use you to lure him into our web, and wait to strike.”

Bucky doesn’t really love her nonchalance at using him as bait, but he supposes he’s in danger as long as Crossbones remains at large anyway. “And then what?”

“You mean after we finish him off? You’ll go back to the Army, I assume—you got a destiny to fulfill and all that. Try to stay alive in slightly less dire circumstances. That kind of thing.”

“And you’ll go back to your own, uh, time?”

She shakes her head. “The long way around, maybe, if I live that long. This was a one-way trip—my team was supposed to destroy the time-displacement equipment as soon as I jumped. And there’s nothing in this time I could use to go back, anyway. Yeah, I know, even in a world where Hydra has blue ray guns that vaporize people on the spot,” she adds at his questioning look.

“So, you’re just…stuck here?”

“There are worse places to land,” she says, gesturing to an unremarkable guesthouse a few blocks away. They turn to walk toward it. “I’m not trapped in enormous skirts, and people like me can always get work.”

“And what people are those?” he asks. She’s hard to pin down, he thinks, but he likes trying. “Russian lady soldiers, or…?”

“More or less. I trained with my…former government’s S.S.R. equivalent, I guess you could say, from a pretty young age. Covered all manner of sinning how-tos.”

“Sinning? Didn’t you say you worked with Steve?”

She shrugs. “Yeah, but I didn’t start there. The Soviets…weren’t very nice after the war. But they taught me what I needed to know to get away, and I defected to the good guys. Like I said, I can find work. Maybe with the actual S.S.R. or something. No one ever expects the five-foot-three gal to kill a man with her bare hands, so we’ll see, I guess.”

Bucky trails a couple of steps behind her as they approach the inn she’d spotted, torn between a little bit of terror and a lot of attraction. When she glances back to smile at him, he leans toward the latter.

***

The guesthouse has a room available at the end of the hall on the upper floor—a good location within the building, strategically, and it comes with a partial view of the Adriatic Sea to boot. They pose as an enlisted married couple on all-too-brief leave, and Natasha chats with the caretaker about her alleged adventures in battlefield nursing while Bucky hides his hands in his pockets and hopes the man leading them to their room doesn’t notice her lack of a ring.

Once they’re alone again, Natasha puts Bucky to work inventorying her duffel of weaponry. She pulls a few of the guns that there’s no ammunition for to trade in town for food or more useful munitions, as well as a small wad of cash. While he counts out bullets and reloads, she slips out to resupply, though not before giving Bucky a pair of small knives, just in case.

After the whirlwind of the last day or so, Bucky is grateful for a few minutes of peace to clear his head. Natasha’s story still sounds beyond implausible, but it’s taken root in his mind anyway. He can’t think of any other way she’d know about Steve or be able to predict Rumlow’s moves. If she’d wanted him dead or taken hostage, she’s had plenty of chances to do both, and, anyway, he could theoretically walk out of this inn right now if he wanted to.

He doesn’t, though. There’s the mortal peril to consider, of course—the fact that her quick thinking and quicker movements have kept him safe so far makes him reluctant to even get too close to the window without her nearby. But more than that, he’s captivated by the notion that she’s here _for him_. Whether some futuristic version of Steve Rogers had really sent her to protect him or not, that’s what she’s here doing.

Bucky has spent so much of his life worried about others—Steve and Mrs. Rogers, his parents and little sister, the men in his unit, the entire United States of America to a certain extent—that suddenly being the object of protection instead of the subject is a new feeling. And to have this near-stranger convinced that he’s worth saving…it means something. That she seems to recognize he’s not totally helpless—and that she seems not to mind his company either—also has an appeal.

In short, he’s never met anyone like Natalia Alianovna Romanova—he practices the feel of the foreign syllables, whispering them aloud, and they roll off his tongue like he’s meant to say them. The feeling makes him want to survive this whole damn mess, one way or another, just to see what else she can do.

He reaches the bottom of the duffel bag, the bevy of remaining guns loaded and sorted neatly on the floor, and finds a radio, which hisses static when he touches it. Bucky switches it off as quickly as it came on—no telling who might be listening on any given frequency—and adds it to the small pile of non-weapon supplies in the corner.

The door creaks, and, without thinking, Bucky flings one of the knives toward it. The blade lands hilt-deep in the doorframe, about at chin level with Natasha, who steps inside with an amused look on her face.

“Nice shot, _dorogoi_ , but we’ll have to work on your aim. Bit different than firing a gun, huh?” She tugs it out of the wood and offers it back to him.

Bucky’s pulse slows to normal, and he rises from the floor to help her unload the netted bags she’s brought. “A little, yeah. Looks like you had some luck?”

Natasha nods and gestures at her purchases. “There’s not a ton of food to be had—that’s war for you—but I got some bread, at least, and it’s Italy, so there’s some olive oil and salt for flavor. And a water jug—gotta stay hydrated. Bartered for a few rounds that should work in a couple of those guns, and then the rest is mostly cleaning supplies.”

“Cleaning supplies?” Bucky stares at her. “Where are you going with this…?”

“Explosives,” Natasha grins. “Bombs. The chemicals react—I’ll show you. And then we’ll show Rumlow, when we’re ready.”

Bucky grins, too. “I can see why Future Steve sent you.”

She pauses in her arrangement of the cleaning supplies on the small table. “He didn’t. Well, I mean, he did, but I volunteered. He didn’t send me specifically. There was a whole team of people who could’ve gone—or come, rather; I’m just the one who did.” She resumes her organizing and begins measuring out different bleaches and detergents into empty containers.

Bucky joins her, following her lead with the chemicals, but she doesn’t say anything more than necessary to explain what she’s combining and why and which mixtures not to mix, period, if he wants to keep his hands intact. A full twenty minutes of bomb assembly goes by without conversation, and while the task does take some concentration, he’s still distracted by the notion of _I volunteered_ right up until they finally seal the last of the homemade grenades.

That’s the point when he asks, “Okay, you _volunteered_? To leave your time and your…friends, your team, or whatever, to—to come here and build makeshift bombs with a guy who’s probably gonna die by some other Nazi’s bullet sooner or later anyway?”

Natasha purses her lips and looks pointedly at the tidy stacks of explosives she’s begun making underneath the window, rather than at Bucky, who flops onto the bed and stretches, muscles stiff from standing over the table for so long. “First of all,” she says slowly. “You’re not going to die. Not as long as we can keep you out of Rumlow's sights, anyway.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” she shakes her head and, not without hesitation, sits at the oppose end of the mattress, leaning against the footboard, knees under her chin. “He’s the disruption in the timeline, or he’s trying to be. The future isn’t set, but if we get rid of him, and I keep out of the way of major world events, it should all happen like it’s supposed to. Including you not dying in the next few days, or however long it takes to deal with Rumlow.”

“And you really are just stuck here?”

She shrugs, allowing a half-smile to form. “You’re all right, you know. I could think of worse ways to spend World War II.”

“They’re gonna call it that?”

“Oh…yes. We’ve managed to avoid a third one so far, at least, although the Americans and the Soviets came close a few times. Got Germany out of the picture, though.”

Bucky contemplates that for a few seconds. “Good to know, but you didn’t actually answer my question. Why you volunteered. Why you, instead of any of those other teammates?”

“Honestly?” She looks up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. “I wanted to meet you. Had for a while, really, I just…”

He sits up at that and moves tentatively toward her corner of the bed. “What, got born sixty or seventy years too late? I mean, I’m flattered, and—and grateful, don’t think I’m not, but…”

“It’s just—well, you know Steve.” She shakes her head a little ruefully, and her short curls bounce with the movement. “I don’t think he’s really changed since, like, now. Besides the physical stuff, obviously. But he…he’s just so _good_. Not in a cheesy way, and believe me, I’ve met plenty of charismatic fakes and villains. He’s the real deal—well, you already knew that. You probably knew before anyone. An honest-to-goodness, genuinely super, true hero. And I’m just…not that. Never have been. Made my peace a long time ago with the idea that some of us have to fight in the shadows to keep the light shining on as many other people as possible.”

He can see that with her, he realizes, especially with her earlier comment about sinning, and he understands it. On base, there were always guys who had looked down on snipers—there’s no honor in shooting a man in the back, even a Nazi—and yet one soldier, firing from the shadows, could be as effective as an army in the right circumstances. Someone with her skill set—a spy, even one working for the good guys—could be in the same boat.

Bucky reaches for her hand, and his touch startles her, but she lets him take it and continues, “Being around that kind of person, that kind of _leader_ , it just…it makes you want to be better, too. You know? And I thought…maybe. And then he started to open up a little, and he told me about this friend who used to hit the bullies he couldn’t, who’d watch his six and stand back while people kept pinning medals on Captain America.”

“That’s a nice way of saying I’ve hit a lot of idiot New Yorkers in alleyways…”

“And, well—given the chance, I wanted to meet the guy who could do the dirty work and still be, I don’t know, worthy. One of the good guys. Does that make sense?” She peers at him, seeming to search for some sense that she’s crossed a line.

Bucky’s eyes widen, but he can’t help scoffing a little. “Some hero. I’d be dead in Azzano if you hadn’t shown up, and apparently I can’t keep Steve out of this damn war anyway…or an ice-coma?”

“You’re doing fine,” she insists. “It’s a lot to roll with, I know, but really. It was worth it. To me, I mean. To meet you. To—”

Bucky gives up any semblance of detachment or distrust at the new look on her face, soft and open, and he leans toward her, almost without realizing it, praying he hasn’t misjudged her. But she pulls his hand to her waist and kisses him, hard and fast like a predator who’s waited hours to pounce. Bucky wraps his arms around her, and they both rise to their knees as she responds in kind, their bodies flush against each other. He snakes one hand up her back to tangle in her loose hair; the other lands on the curve of her hip, fingers running along the rough material of her stolen fatigues.

Natasha shifts, moving her mouth to his neck and giving him better access to undo her belt and work his hand up under her top. She pulls back from him, just long enough for him to worry that she’s going to call whatever’s happening a mistake or a distraction.  Instead, she unbuttons the shirt, tossing it aside and leaving nothing behind but the ragged bandage on her shoulder. She apparently hasn’t been wearing a brassiere this whole time, and the realization makes him gasp quietly.

She smiles at that, giving him a moment to admire her impossibly white, smooth skin, the gentle swell of her breasts, the sudden resurgence of realization that she came for _him_ , that she wants _him_ , that this enigma of a woman has traversed space and time because his friend tells a good story. Then she rushes forward, hands going to work on—and then under—his trousers, and Bucky stops being able to think so clearly.

“Natalia,” he whispers, wrapping an arm around her to pull her close and splaying his free hand across her breast, his thumb circling her nipple. She responds by kissing him on the mouth again and by yanking down every article of clothing below his waist, giving herself full access to fondle him in turn. Another few breaths, and she pushes him onto the bed until she’s above him, unbuttoning his shirt and leaning back as he pulls it off. She returns to hovering over him, balanced on her hands and knees.

Bucky presses his mouth to one of her dangling breasts, freeing his hands to pull off the rest of her clothing. She tilts forward to kick away her trousers and then maneuvers his off with one hand, and her shifting balance gives him an opening to press two fingers into her. She clenches around his hand with a controlled firmness almost as soon as he makes contact, then gasps and stills, letting him work his mouth and fingers on her while his free hand supports her weight just enough to keep her from collapsing onto him.

He switches breasts, and she leans into it sideways, rearranging her legs so that she’s sitting astride his abdomen, with his hand still between them. He takes the hint and maneuvers himself into her, eliciting a low moan as she sits up, pushing him in deeper. Natasha rides him with a deliberate, rough rhythm that leaves him barely able to keep his hands wrapped around her ribs to support her at the desired angle, but he manages to use his thumbs on her breasts again.

“James—oh! Yes, James, just,” Natasha pants, and hearing his given name on her lips like that sends him over the edge. He bucks into her, keeping the pace she’s set until she shudders into a short series of silent gasps for air and collapses onto his chest.

Neither of them moves for a good minute, though they’ve worked up a decent sweat. Natasha nuzzles his neck briefly, then rolls off of him into standing and slips into the en suite to rinse off.

Bucky wriggles to the edge of the mattress so he can lean his head back over the edge and call to her, “Still worth it?”

She laughs, deep and genuine and audible even over the running water. “Like I said, _milii moi_ , you’re doing just fine.”

***

They’re clean, dressed, and out of the room just before sunset, a healthy stack of bills and coins left on the bed for the innkeeper. Natasha zeroes in on a parked convertible she’d noticed earlier and hotwires it with impressive speed, claiming cars will get a lot harder to steal in the future.

“You’ll have to teach me how to do _that_ sometime,” Bucky chuckles as they drive out of the village, headed inland. He’d managed to remember an old Allied base, just inside enemy territory, that had been abandoned when the frontline had shifted. It seemed as good a place as any to catch Crossbones—Natasha’s plan was to rig the place with explosives, use the radio to send out a few decoy messages to lure him there, and blow up the entire building with Crossbones inside of it.

They’re still hashing out the best way to ensure he explodes without risking their own hides by proximity when a screech of tires interrupts the conversation. It’s Crossbones, still wearing the same masked helmet and the painted armor, and he’s gunning for Bucky and Natasha like he has absolutely nothing to lose. Bucky figures he probably doesn’t.

Natasha slams her foot on the gas pedal, and this time Bucky doesn’t need orders to act—he’s already crouched in the backseat, unloading his carbine on the motorcycle in pursuit. If Crossbones has bulletproof clothing, they can at least slow him down. But he dodges half the shots entirely, weaving at dangerous angles along the darkening road, and the bullets that hit him or his bike mostly glance off.

“Shit,” Bucky mutters, reaching for a rifle with a sharper-tipped round, just as Crossbones whips out his own firearm and starts shooting at them one-handed. Apparently he can’t even feel the recoil. Bucky manages to take a chunk out of the man’s arm with one lucky shot. Rumlow barely seems to notice, but the hit jerks his arm just enough to throw off his aim, and his next shot strikes Natasha in her already-injured clavicle.

Their vehicle swerves sideways—Natasha’s tough but she isn’t immune to pain—and for a terrifying second, Bucky thinks the car is about to flip off the road. She turns into the skid, though, whipping the tail of the car around in a full circle so fast that Bucky has to grab onto the seat to keep from flying out like his empty M2 does. The rear bumper strikes Crossbones squarely in the chest as he comes at them, and both he and his motorcycle go flying off the road into the woods.

Natasha rights the car and speeds away faster still. “He’s gonna recover from that, fast!” she screams over the whip of wind. “Need to pull over as soon as we can find somewhere—not much gas left—be ready to—”

She drops off midsentence, cutting a hard left off-road toward what looks like some kind of abandoned warehouse. Bucky’s up and out of the car before it’s fully stopped, coat pockets stuffed with their makeshift grenades and a lighter, the Browning in his hand, and a pistol strapped to his thigh. Natasha, similarly armed, stumbles as she climbs out, and he whirls around to catch her before she falls.

“Don’t,” she hisses. “Get back, start arming—just go, James.”

“Not without you,” he snaps back, pulling her up. “On your feet, Natalia!”

Natasha steadies herself against him, rolling back her uninjured shoulder. She takes a few deep breaths and nods. “Let’s go.”

They make it inside the small structure, just as the sounds of a damaged motorcycle start to crop up, and go to work scattering several of the bombs around the space amid the clutter of decaying wooden crates and makeshift shelves. If they can somehow light Rumlow's clothing on fire and get him near enough to one of the explosives, that should do the trick—or so Natasha hypothesizes, with the caveat that both of them still need to get far enough away to avoid the blast.

There’s only the one wide interior, with nowhere to hide but behind a bigger pile of detritus, so they get in position, crouching at the far end of the room from where they hope he’ll enter.

“When he comes,” Natasha says in a low voice, through gritted teeth. “You _stay here_. You stay _down_. And you keep firing until you’re out of bullets or we’re out of enemy, got it? Get back to the car and get away if you need to.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “While you do what? Natalia—you’re injured, you…”

“I’ve had worse,” she mutters, shaking her head. There’s sweat beading on her forehead. “Scar tissue, remember? Bleeding’s already slowing down. I’m going to try to get him toward one of our traps, or at least off-balance for long enough that you have a clear shot or I can get one of my knives under that helmet. _Vy ponimayete_?”

He doesn’t speak Russian, but he can guess her meaning. “I got it. But I don’t like it—if I hit you, or…he’s _huge_ , Nat. I know you can hold your own, but—”

She shakes her head again. “I don’t matter here. You do. Don’t argue with me, _dorogoi_. Just stay alive.”

As if on cue, Crossbones crashes through the front wall of the warehouse, barreling towards them with a machine gun blazing in each hand. There’s not much cover, but Bucky makes the most of what’s around him.  He ducks between stacks of wood and metal to lob a few lit grenades at Crossbones, who manages to deflect each of them with a firm swat before they burst.

The building rattles, and Natasha comes flying from somewhere unseen, vaulting over the clutter to land precisely on Rumlow's shoulders. She jams a knife into the sliver of skin between his helmet and collar, using her shins to knock the guns out of his grip. He staggers forward. Bucky starts to breathe a sigh of relief, but the stumbling turns out to be a way of throwing Natasha off. She lands cleanly, though, and Bucky shoulders his rifle and starts shooting again—it’s easier to aim for Rumlow’s unarmored thighs and arms when they aren’t driving in the dark.

What’s left of the fading dusk streams in through the windows, providing just enough light for Natasha to surge forward, nimbly dodging Bucky’s shots, and knee Crossbones in the crotch. His body doubles over on reflex, if not from acute pain. Natasha grabs his helmet at the same time as she jumps to kick his knees with both feet, launching herself—and his headgear—away like a swimmer doing laps. She tosses the helmet aside and jackknifes up.

Bucky stares for a half-second, briefly transfixed by seeing for the first time the face of this soldier from the future who so badly wants him dead. He looks like he might have been handsome, once, but any good looks have long since been obliterated by a nasty mess of burnt skin and scars, twisted into unfiltered rage as he charges at Natasha.

She leaps onto his shoulders again, this time lassoing his bloodied neck with her legs and using their combined momentum to yank him to the ground. It works, and he hits the concrete floor with an audible grunt and another knife buried firmly in his thigh. He grabs Natasha’s arm as he goes down, though, yanking her with him.

Crossbones stays focused on Natasha—he grabs a handful of her hair with his free hand and flings her at the nearest wall like a loose piece of clothing. Bucky has his orders, but he surges forward anyway, not caring if he reveals himself. She doesn’t even have time to scream, let alone recover, before she hits the corrugated metal a few feet up and slams into the floor headfirst. Even several yards away, Bucky can hear the sound of her skull cracking, and an involuntary shriek of “ _No!_ ” escapes his throat.

Blood seeps gently out onto the rough concrete around her crumpled body, and suddenly Bucky can’t breathe.

Crossbones struggles upright with a roar, and Bucky twists around to see him staggering nearer. He’s clearly having trouble putting weight on the leg that Natasha had stabbed, which is now spurting blood like some grotesque fountain and keeping him from moving too fast. Bucky’s body feels like it’s encased in ice, though, and moving is somehow the most difficult thing he could possibly do in this moment.

He snaps out of the trance seconds later, when Crossbones tackles him to the ground. He’s moving slowly enough that they don’t go down nearly as hard as Natasha had, but the impact still hurts. Bucky’s ankle twists beneath their combined weight, and the pain shocks him back to his senses. He grapples for his rifle, raising the barrel to unload what’s left of his ammunition into Rumlow's gut, below his chest armor.

Crossbones lets out an animalistic moan, going limp just long enough for Bucky to get out from underneath him and light his last grenade. He charges at Bucky again, stuttering forward like a zombie, and Bucky chucks his discarded helmet back to him.

The other man catches it and barks out a laugh. “You actually think you’ve won, don’t you?”

He glances down at the helmet, and confusion ghosts across his face for just a moment before the bomb inside it goes off.

The explosion throws Bucky into a pile of crates, but he manages to brace himself for impact, so the fall doesn’t kill him. It does send spasms of pain through every muscle he can name and dislocates his left shoulder. Somehow, though, he manages to prop himself up on his other elbow amid the rubble to survey the damage. Rumlow's head and upper body have been obliterated, and there’s a scorched, bloody mess where the rest of him had been.

A few feet away lies Natasha, still dripping red and a little burnt on the cheek that was closest to the explosion.

Bucky crawls over to her and cradles her broken body. She’s still warm, and he can’t breathe again. The fear and fury and frenetic timbre of the last two days hit him all at once, and even the uninjured parts of him dissolve into exhaustion. He gasps for air and chokes on it. At some point, he starts shaking and realizes his face is hot with tears.

The refrain echoes in his head, over and over: _She saved me. She saved me. She completed her mission. She saved me, and I couldn’t save her. She—_

He has no idea how long he sits there, or would have continued to sit there, before the unmistakable sound of tank treads crunching over land interrupts his daze. Bucky looks up, vision a little blurred, and the warehouse is swarming with troops clad in black Hydra uniforms, the emblem blazing from each man’s arm. They’re all shouting in German, and before Bucky can process what’s happening, they’re dragging him outside, into one of their cars, binding his wrists and knees and throwing him into the trunk of a car.

As the vehicle grinds over broken roads and groans around corners, Bucky realizes he’s now Hydra’s prisoner—but the present-day German Hydra, not some furtive futuristic version that knows who he is or who he’s supposed to be. If they had any idea, he’d be dead already. But, though he’s fighting off unconsciousness, he’s not dead. Not yet.

 _Natalia died for this_ , he tells himself. _For you. So you survive it. Whatever they do, you survive it. You weather the storm, for her, for Steve—for the future._

***

Days or weeks or months later, an impossibly tall Steve Rogers unstraps him from a cold metal table. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer fact of him, let alone his hare-brained rescue mission, armed with what turns out to be a stage prop and little else.

But the only thing Bucky can focus on as he stumbles after his friend is that he’s begun living out Natasha’s future—and what comes next is his fate to make.

**Author's Note:**

> Portions of dialogue and general plot points are, of course, taken from James Cameron's 1984 film [_The Terminator_](http://terminator.wikia.com/wiki/The_Terminator). The story title is from "[Satisfied](http://genius.com/Lin-manuel-miranda-satisfied-lyrics)," Track 11 on the _Hamilton_ Original Broadway Cast Recording.
> 
> If constantly talking about what incredible betas [Red](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_b_rackham) and [Lex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ilostmyshoe) are is wrong, I don't want to be right. Because they are the _most_ incredible. And special thanks to Red for spurring the actual writing of this fic with her [perfectly rendered crossover fanart](http://redrackham87.tumblr.com/image/135889648795).


End file.
